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It was the biggest bust ever by London police, but on the streets three bricks of cocaine doesn’t amount to a “hill of beans,” says an outreach worker.

And maybe that’s the problem.

If taking three kilograms of cocaine and a press to make it into sellable bricks for $100,000 each off the market at once — as London police did in a seizure announced last week — doesn’t make the stuff scarce, how big and how widespread is London’s drug scene?

“It’s very, very accessible to people on the street,” said Henry Eastabrook, who works with drug users every day as part of his outreach through the London Intercommunity Health Centre. “We have a significant amount of organized crime in this city . . . and because people feel a physical and emotional need to use (drugs), it’s convenient and profitable for them to bring in drugs.”

“I don’t want to sound unfair to the police because they do good work, but my first response is it doesn’t make that much of a difference,” Eastabrook. “It’s a hill of beans. It’s one bean.”

Cocaine, sold in $5 and $10 quantities for crack users or $100 grams for snorting, can be found easily in London, Eastabrook said.

It may be only one bean, but it’s three times the amount seized during any one bust by London police alone last year, and three times the total amount seized the year before, said Det. Sgt. Chris McCoy, head of the force’s guns and drugs section.

“I’m not saying I’m totally seeing a pattern change, but over the past 12 months, we’ve had some pretty significant seizures at the kilo level of cocaine,” he said.

McCoy agreed the seizure wouldn’t have much impact on the supply in London, but called it a “small victory.”

“It’s put some of the higher level dealers in London on notice,” he said.

He said investigators were glad to get the mechanical press, which indicates the people using it were “key level dealers,” because the press is used to form one-kilogram bricks of cocaine that had been filled and stretched with additives.

Bigger busts usually require more resources and end up involving RCMP or OPP because the probes have taken police across jurisdictions, he said. “We were able to do this investigation from start to finish. There were no wiretaps or stings.”

Though police have not publicly linked any city street or biker gangs to the seizure, McCoy said it’s a safe assumption gangs were involved.

The case was also unusual in that one of the suspects charged with producing cocaine was only 16.

“This is so far off the scale, having someone this young,” said McCoy, adding he’s never seen someone so young with such a large-scale drug offence.